天气渐渐转暖，去沙滩玩被提上了议事日程。于是想起了去年九月，我们与朋友去沙滩的经历。那是一个没有阳光的日子，小孩子们还是玩得很开心，有我拍的照片为证 ，有女儿写的作文为证，还有儿子躲在太阳伞下睡觉的记忆。

Today I went to the beach. Now, the first thing that may pop into your head is an image of children in swimsuits making a sand castle, but this beach was nothing like that.

First of all, the beach was as cold as the Arctic Circle. There were even fog clouds! The water was especially freezing, which made it perfect for playing keep-away, in which two or more people would try to go as close to the water as they could without getting wet. (It’s an extra bonus if the water is cold and everybody is dry!)

The sand at the beach isn’t exactly very “first rate” sand, because anything using very wet sand will get bombarded by the waves, but anything far from it doesn’t stick together. Still, though, sand is very good for making protective walls and moats. The best line of defense is a wall, though it takes a long time to build, and sometimes the water splashes upwards and there is no way to get it out without making a hole for it to flow out of, and therefore a hole for it to flow into, also. Moats are faster to make (you just dig) and have pretty good drainage, but if the water is fast enough, or is more than just about an inch deep, the moat will just flood and become non-functional. A way to drain out the water, though, is first to see where the water is flowing out of, then dig a channel that water can get out of. To stop water from going in, it would slightly help if you constructed a mini-wall that is angled the way the backwash flows. Moats can be made into a system similar to storm drains to get water out, which is useful for preventing the sand from becoming soupy and therefore impossible to use.

At the beach, there are tons of shells! Shells are practically left and right, but the only problem is getting the shells. Most of the big shells, like sand dollars, are broken, and the only way to get them whole is chasing after the ones that wash up with the waves. That usually requires getting wet, and going into the icy cold water. However, there are tons of other shells. There are crab shells, probably cast aside by snacking seagulls, and sand dollar shells that had the creatures inside eaten by ocean birds.

All in all, I had a fun trip to the beach, even though it was icy cold.